Dedication
We dedicate this issue to Vito Perrone, the Dean of the New School for Behavioral Studies in Education (1968-72) and the Center for Teaching and Learning (1972-1986) at the University of North Dakota, a man whose respect for human potential, clear-eyed commitment to democracy and vision of education as the path to a better world inspired thousands of teachers and teacher educators across the nation.
As a historian, Vito understood that personal narratives are the key to our understanding of each other. For his entire career, he wrote and spoke against the narrow view of children that keeps us from seeing them in the fullest context of their lives.
As a reformer, Vito persisted, bravely taking on an educational bureaucracy in a history-making effort that made teaching broadly progressive, even in the farthest reaches of this rural state.
As an administrator, Vito made us realize that our goal for improving the lot of us required integrated activity from each of us.
And as an educator, Vito believed in a healthy role for the liberal arts, local knowledge, and the long view.
Vito has many colleagues from the University of North Dakota, the North Dakota Study Group, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and others across the country who would have wanted to write for this special issue. We made some tough choices and thank here George Hein, Jay Featherstone, Pat Carini, Kathe Jervis, and Cecelia Traugh for their contributions. All friends of Vito, they use similar words to describe him: visionary, scholar, humanitarian, organizer, activist, athlete, energizer, educator —and as a man who is confident but modest; calm but impatient with simple solutions; kind but ferocious in his dedication to improving public education.
We agree with our contributors, yet it seems possible that none of these words describes Vito's effect on people quite as well as Jay Featherstone's simple characterization of him as “a great guy.”
Kathleen Gershman and Glenn Olsen, Guest Editors
| IN THIS ISSUE: | |||
| HEIN | Introduction | HTML FORMAT | PDF FORMAT |
| FEATHERSTONE | The Organizer: Some Thoughts for a Future Historian | HTML FORMAT | PDF FORMAT |
| CARINI | Vito Perrone and the Struggle for Democratic Schools | HTML FORMAT | PDF FORMAT |
| JERVIS | Large Purposes in the Classroom: Doing Tai Chi Together | HTML FORMAT | PDF FORMAT |
| TRAUGH | Trusting the Possibilities: Giving Voice to Vito's Ideas | HTML FORMAT | PDF FORMAT |
| Excerpt from Vito Perrone's "A History of Teacher Education at UND" | HTML FORMAT | PDF FORMAT |
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